Bhumibol Hospital shows the right way to build trust with partnered clinics
Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital is a tertiary hospital under the Directorate of Medical Services, Royal Thai Air Force. One of the first to join the universal health coverage scheme, it serves as many as 200,000 patients each year.
In order to take care of patients thoroughly, covering primary to critical care, and reduce congestion in the hospital, in 2006 the hospital collaborated with the National Health Security Office (NHSO) to find 25 private clinics as partners.
However, partnering clinics and taking patients who need primary care from Bhumibol Hospital did not directly translate into the patients’ trust. Meanwhile, Bhumibol Hospital remains committed to supervising service standards and has come up with several projects to achieve this goal.
One of them is “Primary Care Trust” where Bhumibol Hospital goes to partnered clinics to exchange knowledge and expertise and share proper medical guidelines with them to ensure that patients receive the same high standard of treatment. Bhumibol Hospital has referred over 150,000 primary care patients to the clinics, but they remain patients of the hospital. This helps patients feel secure about the treatment they will get.
Air Vice Marshal Taweepong Pajaree, Director of Bhumibol Hospital, said the project has significantly reduced the number of primary care patients. Only 10%-15% of chronic patients are sent back to the hospital. This helps Bhumibol Hospital focus on more difficult tertiary cases.
Another important project is “E-Referral Healthcare System” whereby some of the referral processes are removed or made more convenient. In collaboration with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Bhumibol Hospital has developed a cloud-based database whereby partnered clinics and hospitals can share patients’ information in real time. Patients can save their time and money and the treatment procedure runs more smoothly.
Air Vice Marshal Taweepong explained that the system isn’t fully electronic yet due to some issues, such as staff experience and lagged Internet connection. E-Referral Healthcare System now covers 92% of all information and going forward the hospital aims to up it to 95%.
In addition to having better connectivity between the hospital and primary care partnered clinics with both projects, Bhumibol Hospital aims to enhance patients’ experience with “Application for Patients”. With support from the Digital Government Development Agency (Public Organisation), Bhumibol Hospital launched an application on 9 December 2019 that allows patients to make an appointment and browse their medical records.
“In the next phase, we wish to push patients to start taking better care of their health,” said Air Vice Marshal Taweepong.
He concluded: “Every project aims to build an integrated service with central focus on excellent primary care and further it with the E-Referral Healthcare System and application. Our goal is to ensure that patients receive high standard treatment so we can build the trust of the people we serve.”